I saw pity, and I couldn’t handle it. I whirled away and stalked from the restaurant.
“Quinn, wait.” Cora raced after me. She grabbed my arm and whirled me around.
“What was that? Was that a ring she picked up? Are you going to propose to me?”
Her eyes lit with a smile, but I snorted. “No.” Hell, no! “Because I never want to see you again. It’s over, Cora.”
This time, she didn’t go after me when I stormed away, and I wouldn’t have let her stop me if she’d tried.
Cora was a sobbing mess. It was hard to understand anything she was saying. I still wasn’t sure what had just happened between her and Quinn, but he’d been so upset, more upset than I’d ever seen him before.
Through all Cora’s tears, I finally understood that he’d seen something on her phone he was never supposed to see. So I grabbed her phone, and then I saw something I never wanted to see.
“Oh my God, Cora. You…you’re cheating on Quinn? Quinn?” I stared at her, wondering when she’d lost her freaking mind. “How…how…how could you?”
“I love him, Zoey. I swear I do. Quinn is the best boyfriend I’ve ever had. I don’t want to lose him. What do I do?”
“How about not having sex with other men?” That’d be a good start.
She huffed out a sound of irritation. “Those were just flings. Quinn’s the real deal. No one’s ever been as good to me as he is. I really do want to marry him. But I like sex. What’s so wrong with that?”
“Oh my God, Cora. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Marriage means monogamy. And you...you just lost the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
I turned away and left her in Jenny’s Crab Shack too, with Quinn’s engagement ring a little buttery but tucked safely in my pocket.
I cried a little bit, wandered around town a lot, refused to return to my apartment where Cora was. About an hour after everything fell apart, Caroline called, frantic.
“Oren just showed up here with a black eye and really upset, mumbling something to Noel about how Quinn will never forgive him for what he did. What the heck happened?”
“I don’t…I don’t know. I’m not sure. Cora cheated on Quinn, and they broke up.”
“What? Cora cheated—Wait. Oren wouldn’t possibly be stupid enough to...not with Cora? Would he?”
“I don’t think so.” I shook my head. “No, the texts I read weren’t from him. She definitely cheated with someone else.” Or maybe a couple someone elses from the sounds of it.
“That lying fucking whore. I mean...I’m sorry. I know she’s your—”
“She is not my friend,” I snapped. “Not right now. She lied to me too. I had no idea.” I’d helped Quinn buy her a ring. I’d...Quinn probably thought I knew about this. He probably thought I’d purposely led him on a merry goose chase. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”
I hung up on Caroline and raced toward Quinn’s apartment.
When I stormed through the front door of my apartment, Ten was slouched on the sofa, eating from a bag of potato chips and drinking a beer as he watched television.
I slammed the door behind me and began to pace the front room.
“I’m sensing turmoil,” he said mildly.
I picked up one of his textbooks off the coffee table and heaved it as hard as I could against the wall.
“And I’m sensing it has something to do with...classwork?”
I sent him a glare. “Cora cheated on me.”
Ten dropped his beer. “Shit, man.” He popped to his feet. “So, it’s true then?”
I stopped pacing. “What? Wait, you knew about this?”
“What? No! Fuck, no. I’ve just heard—I mean, come on, man. She was a total slut before you hooked up with her, but—”
“She was what?” I marched toward him. He backed up a step.
“Dude, we called her Cora the Whora. How did you never know that? Before you two hooked up, she’d had just about every guy on the team.”
He must’ve realized that was the very worst thing he could’ve possibly said because his eyes widened a split second before I grabbed his shirt and hauled him close until we were nearly nose-to-nose. “Really? Did she have you?”
Ten didn’t answer, but his face paled.
I let go of him and stepped back. “Oh God. She did.”
“Ham. Man.” He inched toward me, reaching out, but I slapped his hand away. “It was only one time, before you ever met her, before you even knew she existed.” When I just stared at him, he closed his eyes and winced. “Okay. And then one time after.”